Intimacy - Phan
by didusaymiku
Summary: A fairly short narrative journal/diary entry. Written in the first person from Dan's perspective. This story mentions sex multiple times (13, to be exact), so you may want to avoid this if the very thought of sex isn't your thing. [Disclaimer: I don't own Dan or Phil. No events in this fic have actually taken place. Phan is not real.]


Dear Diary, [Must I address this book? Seriously, does it need such a title?!]  
I spent a lot of time thinking today. I didn't have much to do since Phil was gone.  
Of course, all I thought about was Phil. Or, myself and Phil together, respectively. I don't think about myself much; unless I'm thinking about Phil and I as a couple.  
Today, I thought about the more intimate aspects of "us" (Can I refer to Phil and I as a pair? Or is that too cliché/clingy/pushy? Oh, great, I'm debating with myself now.)...  
Anyways, yeah, intimacy. It's a beautiful thing, no? It takes a lot for a couple to be personally intimate. You can't pretend you're that close; you have to work to better yourselves to the point where you are just _that_ close.  
It doesn't happen overnight, either. It takes a bit. Hell, it took me over three years to be able to fully feel intimately attached to Phil.  
Oh, and, contrary to popular belief, having sex regularly does not make your relationships genuinely intimate. It gives you, what I believe, is just a false safety net; a mere hope that you'll be able to reach a comfortable standpoint in the future. You cannot just be physically exposed to someone; you need to be exposed from all aspects, which can be extremely scary. No one (especially very masculine males) want to seem weak and feeble to their partners. They want to be tough; they want to feel in control.  
That doesn't work.  
Intimacy is the exact opposite, and I've learned that step by step within the past three years.  
You have to be willing to quit your rough-and-tough masquerade. You have to be willing to let the other person take control. You need to learn how to be comfortable with the weak and exposed side of yourself.  
I used to believe intimacy was all about exposing your physical self. It's not.  
Phil was the first person I've ever met that has told me I was wrong.  
I remember the first time we talked about intimacy. It wasn't really a purposeful conversation; it branched off of a topic we had discussed.  
I was talking about a girlfriend that I thought I was really close with. I remember saying I was upset that we broke up, since I felt (notice that it's in the past tense here) we were intimate. Phil asked me why I felt that way. I simply said, "We had a lot of sex." I realize now I most definitely sounded like an absolute twat.  
He casually said, "So? Sex doesn't necessarily make a couple intimate and close. I mean, I guess you could consider sex part of the whole process, but it's definitely not the only thing."  
Damn, I remember that so clearly.  
I remember the confusion I felt after he said that. When I inquired further, he helped me kind of... "get it."  
He told me that intimacy was more of an emotional sense of closeness than anything. He said, "You can't feel that kind of closeness with someone just by exposing your physical body to them. You need to kind of strip your emotional self in front of them, too."  
I legitimately thought I was going to cry.  
I remember the last thing he said to me before he left the room. "That's why a lot of people regard sex as something special. It's supposed to help two people feel closer intimately. It wasn't supposed to be a quick fix for some sexual desires. And that, Daniel Howell, is why I have never had sex."  
That stuck with me. Oh God, did it stick with me. That remains to be one of the reasons I love him; he's so in-tune with his own emotions.  
Of course, following that, I realized I never felt any type of emotional satisfaction with sex. It was always some sort of physical release; I'd never had any emotional release to pair up with it.  
All the sex I had been having was near meaningless. Unless, that is, you feel a mere physical satisfaction is enough to justify sex.  
I also realized just today that the only time I have ever felt any type of emotional attachment during sex was when I was with Phil. I realized what sex [in my opinion] actually felt like. I realized why I having sex with Phil was so much different from having sex with my casual and miscellaneous girlfriends; I love him. We're emotionally attached, we're extremely close... We're intimate.

-Dan.


End file.
